Was Jane Fonda, who achieved worldly fame in the 1980s doing aerobic step routines in phosphorescent spandex suits, at the ill-named Women’s March on Washington last Saturday?
Ill-named, well, yes. It was the Some Women’s March on Washington. The idea that the parade was a grand convocation speaking with the voice of universal Womanhood staring down the abyss of the Trump Darkness is a piece of self-regarding cant. Far from being a spontaneous expression of pandemic female anxiety, it was rather just another of the all-too frequent mob rallies from the usual suspects, who hit the streets on whims of petulance whenever something they simply don’t like happens. In this case, Hillary lost the election against an overcocky King Kong. These sorts of things are simply not supposed to happen, you see. Ask Meryl Streep.
The march was, at essence, a protest against American democracy. It was therefore by definition a pointless venture, more for affect than effect, which called up predictable elements of activist street theatre.
To answer my question: Fonda was not there. Perhaps exhaustion from her toils in Fort McMurray limited her energy reserves. Floating over Fort McMurray’s miracles of technology and engineering in a rented helicopter is something even a lifetime of Step Master routines cannot prepare you for.
Regardless, I’m sure the Fonda presence was felt. The real question remains, what did her visit to enlighten Alberta accomplish? How did it compare with earlier high-minded interventions? Did it, for example, measure up to the impact of Neil Young’s glum, grim and surly stopover a year or so ago? Or that of Leonardo DiCaprio, the famed grizzly-wrestler, who came to Alberta and put the finishing touches on the Theory of Global Warming with his discovery of the Chinook? Following seminars on his yacht it can now be reported whole flocks of supermodels are looking askance at all those “oils” in the shampoo. And they say change is hard.
Compared to Young and DiCaprio maybe she didn’t really make a difference. However, it’s quite possible that Trump moved up the announcement in favour of Keystone XL, gave it earlier than he normally would have, purely to show that he doesn’t vibrate with the same frequency as Obama when the Hollywood set or the Broadway bunch presumes to set the moral bar on anything.
Leaving Fonda, it was quite a thing Trump pulled off here. For eight years Obama stalled on the “No” he knew he was going to give Keystone. Trump gave a go-ahead on his fourth day in office. He accompanied it with a pledge to purge the institutionalized procrastination that have become the essence of all such “assessment reviews.”
His quick decision puts Trudeau on the spot. The Prime Minister who so recently emoted “We can’t phase out the oil sands tomorrow” did offer a tepid approval of Trump’s move. But there was no real joy in his assent. I wonder, in fact, if he really welcomes it. His supporters, those he courts most zealously in the halls of high environmentalism, certainly do not.
The Kinder Morgan pipeline alone they labelled a betrayal. Greenpeace and its octopus of allies will brand him as an utter sellout if he now is also seen to campaign for Keystone.
Trump has thrown a huge and hungry cat into a basket of flightless pigeons, with his complete reversal of the Obama positions on North American oil, on regulations and hearings, and by placing the highest priority on jobs. Trump’s policies are diametrically in contrast with the boy-scoutism on global warming that is at the centre of Trudeau’s heart.
The Trudeau government has a Suzukian vision of apocalyptic climate change and Elizabeth May reveries on carbon taxes. These are not Trump compatible. A set of Canadian energy policies that were in full accord with the Americans when Obama owned the Oval Office are either now redundant or in direct clash with the world’s first power and our greatest trading partner.
National Post
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